SECURITY BELIEF NO. 5: You are better than the next fellow.

  This is a very tempting belief, but it is often a dangerous one. You tell this to that big bruiser facing you and he’s liable to break your neck. So you appoint a surrogate: Your father is better than his father; your college is better than his college; your accent is better than his accent; your cultural group is better than his cultural group.

  Naturally this fades off into racism and it is not at all surprising that the more lowly the social, economic, or personal position of an individual, the more likely he is to fall prey to the racist temptation.

  It is not surprising that even scientists as individuals have trouble with this one. They can rationalize and say that it must surely be possible to divide mankind into categories in such a way that some categories are superior to others in some ways. Some groups are taller than other groups, for instance, as a matter of genetic inheritance. Might it not be that some groups are, by birth and nature, more intelligent or more honest than others?

  A certain Nobel Prize winner demanded, some time ago, that scientists stop ducking the issue; that they set about determining whether slumdwellers (English translation: Negroes) are not actually “inferior” to nonslumdwellers and whether attempts to help them were not therefore futile.

  I was asked by a certain newspaper to write my views about this, but I said I had better tell them, in advance, what my views were going to be and save myself the trouble of writing an article they wouldn’t print.

  I said that, in the first place, it was very likely that those who were most enthusiastic for such an investigation were quite confident that they had set up measurement standards by which the slumdwellers would indeed prove to be “inferior.” This would then relieve the superior nonslumdwellers of responsibility toward the slumdwellers and of any guilt feeling they might possess.

  If I were wrong, I went on to say, then I felt the investigators should be as eager to find a superior minority as an inferior one. For instance, I strongly suspected that by the measurement standards prevailing in our society, it would turn out that Unitarians and Episcopalians would have a higher average IQ and a higher performance record than other religious groups.

  If this proved to be so, I suggested, Unitarians and Episcopalians ought to wear some distinctive badge, be ushered to the front of the bus, be given the best seats at the theaters, be allowed to use the cleaner restrooms and so on.

  So the newspaper said, “Forget it!” and it’s just as well. No one wants to search out superiors to one’s self—only inferiors.

  SECURITY BELIEF NO. 6: If anything goes wrong, it’s not one’s own fault.

  Virtually everyone has a slight touch of paranoia. With a little practice, this can easily lead one into accepting one of the conspiracy theories of history.

  How comforting it is to know that if you’re failing in business, it’s the unfair crooked tactics of the Bulgarian who owns the store down the block; if you’ve got a pain, it’s because of the conspiracy of Nigerian doctors all about you; if you tripped when you turned to look at a girl, it was one rotten Ceylonese who put that crack in the sidewalk there.

  And it is here at last that scientists are touched most closely—for this Security Belief can turn directly against them for standing out against Security Beliefs in general.

  When the Security Believers are stung by the explosion of the hoaxes and follies that deceive them, what is their last, best defense? Why, that there is a conspiracy of scientists against them.

  I am myself constantly being accused of participating in such a conspiracy. In today’s mail, for instance, I got a most violent and indignant letter, from which I will quote only a couple of mild sentences:

  “Not only are we [the public] being played for fools by politicians … but now these tactics have spread to science as well. If your purpose is deceiving others for whatever intention, let this tell you that you are not one hundred percent successful.”

  I read the letter carefully through and it seemed that he had read some magazine article which had rebutted one of his pet beliefs. He was instantly sure, therefore, not that he himself might be wrong, but that scientists were in a conspiracy against him and were under orders from NASA to lie to him.

  The trouble was that he was referring to some article which had been written by someone else, not me—and I didn’t know what on earth he was talking about.

  However, I am positive that the forces of Rationality will rise triumphant over the onslaughts of Security Believers despite everything. (Knock plastic!)

  LOST IN NON-TRANSLATION

  AT THE NOREASCON (the 29th World Science Fiction Convention), which was held in Boston on the Labor Day weekend of 1971, I sat on the dais, of course, since, as the Bob Hope of science fiction, it is my perennial duty to hand out the Hugos. On my left was my daughter, Robyn, sixteen, blond, blue-eyed, shapely, and beautiful. (No, that last adjective is not a father’s proud partiality. Ask anyone.)

  My old friend Clifford D. Simak was guest of honor, and he began his talk by introducing, with thoroughly justified pride, his two children, who were in the audience. A look of alarm instantly crossed Robyn’s face.

  “Daddy,” she whispered urgently, knowing full well my capacity for inflicting embarrassment, “are you planning to introduce me?”

  “Would that bother you, Robyn?” I asked.

  “Yes, it would.”

  “Then I won’t,” I said, and patted her hand reassuringly.

  She thought a while. Then she said, “Of course, Daddy, if you have the urge to refer, in a casual sort of way, to your beautiful daughter, that would be all right.”

  So you can bet I did just that, while she allowed her eyes to drop in a charmingly modest way.

  But I couldn’t help but think of the blond, blue-eyed stereotype of Nordic beauty that has filled Western literature ever since the blond, blue-eyed Germanic tribes took over the western portions of the Roman Empire, fifteen centuries ago, and set themselves up as an aristocracy.

  … And the manner in which that has been used to subvert one of the clearest and most important lessons in the Bible—a subversion that contributes its little bit to the serious crisis that today faces the world, and the United States in particular.

  In line with my penchant for beginning at the beginning, come back with me to the sixth century B.C. A party of Jews have returned from Babylonian Exile to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, which Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed seventy years before.

  During the Exile, under the guidance of the prophet Ezekiel, the Jews had firmly held to their national identity by modifying, complicating, and idealizing their worship of Yahweh into a form that was directly ancestral to the Judaism of today. (In fact Ezekiel is sometimes called “the father of Judaism.”)

  This meant that when the exiles returned to Jerusalem, they faced a religious problem. There were people who, all through the period of the Exile, had been living in what had once been Judah, and who worshipped Yahweh in what they considered the correct, time-honored ritual. Because their chief city (with Jerusalem destroyed) was Samaria, the returning Jews called them Samaritans.

  The Samaritans rejected the newfangled modifications of the returning Jews, and the Jews abhorred the old-fashioned beliefs of the Samaritans. Between them arose an undying hostility, the kind that is exacerbated because the differences in belief are comparatively small.

  In addition, there were, of course, also living in the land, those who worshipped other gods altogether—Ammonites, Edomites, Philistines, and so on.

  The pressures on the returning band of Jews were not primarily military, for the entire area was under the more or less beneficent rule of the Persian Empire, but it was social, and perhaps even stronger for that. To maintain a strict ritual in the face of overwhelming numbers of nonbelievers is difficult, and the tendency to relax that ritual was almost irresistible. Then, too, young male returnees were attracted to the women at hand and there were intermarriages. Naturally, to humor the wife, ritual was further relaxed.

  But then, possibly as late as about 400 B.C., a full century after the Second Temple had been built, Ezra arrived in Jerusalem. He was a scholar of the Mosaic law, which had been edited and put into final form in the course of the Exile. He was horrified at the backsliding put through a tub-thumping revival. He called the people together, led them in chanting the law and expounding upon it, raised their religious fervor, and called for confession of sins and renewal of faith.

  One thing he demanded most rigorously was the abandonment of all non-Jewish wives and their children. Only so could the holiness of strict Judaism be maintained, in his view. To quote the Bible (and I will use the recent New English Bible for the purpose):

  “Ezra the priest stood up and said, ‘You have committed an offense in marrying foreign wives and have added to Israel’s guilt. Make your confession now to the Lord the God of your fathers and do his will, and separate yourselves from the foreign population and from your foreign wives.’ Then all the assembled people shouted in reply, ‘Yes; we must do what you say …’” (Ezra 10:10–12.)

  From that time on, the Jews as a whole began to practice an exclusivism, a voluntary separation from others, a multiplication of peculiar customs that further emphasized their separateness; and all of this helped them maintain their identity through all the miseries and catastrophes that were to come, through all the crises, and through exiles and persecutions that fragmented them over the face of the Earth.

  The exclusivism, to be sure, also served to make them socially indigestible and imparted to them a high social visibility that helped give rise to conditions that made exiles and persecutions more likely.

  Not everyone among the Jews adhered to this policy of exclusivism. There were some who believed that all men were equal in the sight of God and that no one should be excluded from the community on the basis of group identity alone.

  And one who believed this (but who is forever nameless) attempted to present this case in the form of a short piece of historical fiction. In this fourth-century-B.C. tale the heroine was Ruth, a Moabite woman. (The tale was presented as having taken place in the time of the judges, so the traditional view was that it was written by the prophet Samuel in the eleventh century B.C. No modern student of the Bible believes this.)

  Why a Moabite woman, by the way?

  It seems that the Jews, returning from Exile, had traditions concerning their initial arrival at the borders of Canaan under first Moses, then Joshua, nearly a thousand years before. At that time, the small nation of Moab, which lay east of the lower course of the Jordan and of the Dead Sea, understandably alarmed at the incursion of tough desert raiders, took steps to oppose them. Not only did they prevent the Israelites from passing through their territory, but, tradition had it, they called in a seer, Balaam, and asked him to use his magical abilities to bring misfortune and destruction upon the invaders.

  That failed, and Balaam, on departing, was supposed to have advised the king of Moab to let the Moabite girls lure the desert raiders into liaisons, which might subvert their stern dedication to their task. The Bible records the following:

  “When the Israelites were in Shittim, the people began to have intercourse with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices offered to their gods; and they ate the sacrificial food and prostrated themselves before the gods of Moab. The Israelites joined in the worship of the Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry with them.” (Numbers 25:1–3.)

  As a result of this, “Moabite women” became the quintessence of the type of outside influence that by sexual attraction tried to subvert pious Jews. Indeed Moab and the neighboring kingdom to the north, Ammon, were singled out in the Mosaic code:

  “No Ammonite or Moabite, even down to the tenth generation, shall become a member of the assembly of the Lord … because they did not meet you with food and water on your way out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam … to revile you … You shall never seek their welfare or their good all your life long.” (Deuteronomy 23:3–4, 6.)

  And yet there were times in later history when there was friendship between Moab and at least some men of Israel, possibly because they were brought together by some common enemy.

  For instance, shortly before 1000 B.C. Israel was ruled by Saul. He had held off the Philistines, conquered the Amalekites, and brought Israel to its greatest pitch of power to that point. Moab naturally feared his expansionist policies and so befriended anyone rebelling against Saul. Such a rebel was the Judean warrior David of Bethlehem. When David was pressed hard by Saul and had retired to a fortified stronghold, he used Moab as a refuge for his family.

  “David … said to the king of Moab, ‘Let my father and mother come and take shelter with you until I know what God will do for me.’ So he left them at the court of the king of Moab, and they stayed there as long as David was in his stronghold.” (1 Samuel 22:3–4.)

  As it happened, David eventually won out, became king first of Judah, then of all Israel, and established an empire that took in the entire east coast of the Mediterranean, from Egypt to the Euphrates, with the Phoenician cities independent but in alliance with him. Later, Jews always looked back to the time of David and of his son Solomon as a golden age, and David’s position in Jewish legend and thought was unassailable. David founded a dynasty that ruled over Judah for four centuries, and the Jews never stopped believing that some descendant of David would yet return to rule over them again in some idealized future time.

  Yet, on the basis of the verses describing David’s use of Moab as a refuge for his family, there may have arisen a tale to the effect that there was a Moabite strain in David’s ancestry. Apparently, the author of the Book of Ruth determined to make use of this tale to point up the doctrine of nonexclusivism by using the supremely hated Moabite woman as his heroine.

  The Book of Ruth tells of a Judean family of Bethlehem—a man, his wife, and two sons—who are driven by famine to Moab. There the two sons marry Moabite girls, but after a space of time all three men die, leaving the three women—Naomi, the mother-in-law, and Ruth and Orpah, the two daughters-in-law—as survivors.

  Those were times when women were chattels and when unmarried women, without a man to own them and care for them, could subsist only on charity. (Hence the frequent biblical injunction to care for widows and orphans.)

  Naomi determined to return to Bethlehem, where kinsmen might possibly care for her, but urged Ruth and Orpah to remain in Moab. She does not say, but we might plausibly suppose she is thinking, that Moabite girls would have a rough time of it in Moab-hating Judah.

  Orpah remains in Moab, but Ruth refuses to leave Naomi, saying, “Do not urge me to go back and desert you … Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. I swear a solemn oath before the Lord your God: nothing but death shall divide us.” (Ruth 1:16–17.)

  Once in Bethlehem, the two were faced with the direst poverty and Ruth volunteered to support herself and her mother-in-law by gleaning in the fields. It was harvest-time and it was customary to allow any stalks of grain that fell to the ground in the process of gathering to remain there to be collected by the poor. This gleaning was a kind of welfare program for those in need. It was, however, backbreaking work, and any young woman, particularly a Moabite, who engaged in it, underwent certain obvious risks at the hands of the lusty young reapers. Ruth’s offer was simply heroic.

  As it happened, Ruth gleaned in the lands of a rich Judean farmer named Boaz, who coming to oversee the work, noticed her working tirelessly. He asked after her, and his reapers answered, “She is a Moabite girl … who has just come back with Naomi from the Moabite country.” (Ruth 2:6.)

  Boaz speaks kindly to her and Ruth says, “Why are you so kind as to take notice of me when I am only a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10.) Boaz explains that he has heard how she has forsaken her own land for love of Naomi and how hard she must work to take care of her.

  As it turned out, Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s dead husband, which must be one reason why he was touched by Ruth’s love and fidelity. Naomi, on hearing the story, had an idea. In those days, if a widow was left childless, she had the right to expect her dead husband’s brother to marry her and offer her his protection. If the dead husband had no brother, some other relative would fulfill the task.

  Naomi was past the age of childbearing, so she could not qualify for marriage, which in those days centered about children; but what about Ruth? To be sure, Ruth was a Moabite woman and it might well be that no Judean would marry her, but Boaz had proven kind. Naomi therefore instructed Ruth how to approach Boaz at night and, without crudely seductive intent, appeal for his protection.

  Boaz, touched by Ruth’s modesty and helplessness, promised to do his duty, but pointed out that there was a kinsman closer than he and that, by right, this other kinsman had to have his chance first.

  The very next day, Boaz approached the other kinsman and suggested that he buy some property in Naomi’s charge and, along with it, take over another responsibility. Boaz said, “On the day when you acquire the field from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabitess, the dead man’s wife …” (Ruth 4:5.)

  Perhaps Boaz carefully stressed the adjectival phrase “the Moabitess,” for the other kinsman drew back at once. Boaz therefore married Ruth, who in time bore him a son. The proud and happy Naomi held the child in her bosom and her women friends said to her, “The child will give you new life and cherish you in your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who has proved better to you than seven sons, has borne him.” (Ruth 4:15.)

  This verdict of Judean women on Ruth, a woman of the hated land of Moab, in a society that valued sons infinitely more than daughters, a verdict that she “has proved better to you than seven sons” is the author’s moral—that there is nobility and virtue in all groups and that none must be excluded from consideration in advance simply because of their group identification.